Comments for CogZesthttps://cogzest.com
Thrive in the Sea of KnowledgeTue, 06 Feb 2018 16:27:26 +0000hourly1Comment on Work-Arounds to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) PDF Rendering Problems (Skim) by Luc P. Beaudoinhttps://cogzest.com/2017/10/work-arounds-to-macos-10-13-high-sierra-pdf-rendering-problems-skim/#comment-81381
Tue, 06 Feb 2018 16:27:26 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=5292#comment-81381Apple still hasn’t fixed the issue that is causing problems for PDF renderers.
]]>Comment on Work-Arounds to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) PDF Rendering Problems (Skim) by Derick Fayhttps://cogzest.com/2017/10/work-arounds-to-macos-10-13-high-sierra-pdf-rendering-problems-skim/#comment-81377
Tue, 06 Feb 2018 13:21:58 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=5292#comment-81377Any updates on the status of Skim? Concerns about this are the main thing keeping me from upgrading….
]]>Comment on Cognitively Potent Software Is Mightier than the Pen in the Hands of Able, Motivated Knowledge Builders: Response to Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014) by christophe meudechttps://cogzest.com/2014/07/cognitively-potent-software-is-mightier-than-the-pen-in-the-hands-of-able-motivated-knowledge-builders-response-to-mueller-oppenheimer-2014/#comment-80577
Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:28:17 +0000http://cogzest.com/?p=2568#comment-80577The main problem with the study is that students were told to use whatever means they usually do with no control of their academic ability.

Good students were probably good students in secondary schools and were taking notes by hand: they are used to it. Weaker students probably did not take any notes when younger, and are now switching to using a laptop and take notes using that.

How do the authors controlled for that effect? I would have refused the paper on those grounds.

I used Scrivener too. I liked the side comments and research management features. But I prefer doing it in plaintext now. Leanpub’s new (optional) markdown flavor, Markua, supports inline XML style comments.

Leanpub also generates to PDF and MOBI. I don’t know about any specific tailoring beyond that.

And Leanpub’s customer support is excellent.

Amazon’s cut is crazy, to put it mildly.

]]>Comment on IT Workers Are Not as Inept as Jurgen Appelo Makes Them Out to Be: Response to His Criticism of Leanpub by Greg Turnquisthttps://cogzest.com/2016/08/response-to-a-criticism-of-leanpub/#comment-79440
Fri, 26 May 2017 18:58:29 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=4379#comment-79440As both a fiction writer, a 4-time published tech author, and a full time SW engineer, I have experience with multiple tool chains in the arena of writing.

It’s why, on my previous title (Learning Spring Boot), I used asciidoctor to generate a LibreOffice manuscript for my publisher. And I’m doing the same thing again (Learning Spring Boot 2nd Edition). The tooling is awesome and lets me pull in the source code from my IDE, ensuring the highest fidelity.

By when I write fiction, I use Scrivener. It’s non-linear editing combined with ability to generate PDF and MOBI files, tailored for the target platform, is impossible to beat.

Scrivener works for gobs of text broken up into chapters and scenes. Asciidoctor works for bits of text, bits of admonitions, and bits of code, stirred together.

My interest in Leanpub is what to do for my NEXT tech book. Checking the royalty rates for a tech book that would probably sell for $20-$30, Amazon takes WAY too much of a cut (65%) while Leanpub only wants a sliver (10% + $99 one time fee).

That, to me, is the real differentiator. Marketing has always been up to me, and it pays to write about a technology that sells itself. 😉

]]>Comment on The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff by Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker by Luc P. Beaudoinhttps://cogzest.com/2016/12/the-science-of-managing-our-digital-stuff-by-ofer-bergman-and-steve-whittaker/#comment-78458
Fri, 03 Feb 2017 23:59:32 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=4844#comment-78458Many thanks for all of this, Nathan. Sorry, I didn’t noticed your comment earlier. Will consider that in my review. Let’s keep in touch.
]]>Comment on The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff by Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker by Nathanhttps://cogzest.com/2016/12/the-science-of-managing-our-digital-stuff-by-ofer-bergman-and-steve-whittaker/#comment-78341
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 21:56:24 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=4844#comment-78341A cognate term is personal knowledge management; and a related idea is the personal knowledge base (PKB). A couple of the best texts I’ve found about PKBs, especially about the alternative data models involved in the development of software for addressing the unique challenges of personal knowledge, are:

Bergman and Whittaker’s The Science of Managing our Digital Stuff doesn’t mention the term personal knowledge base, but it does mention Vannevar Bush’s concept of the memex, which figures prominently in the title of both texts by Davies et al.

]]>Comment on Cambridge University Press Pulled its RSS Feeds — Bloggers and Publishers, Please Help Your Readers by Jeff Rivetthttps://cogzest.com/2016/12/cambridge-university-press-pulled-its-rss-feeds/#comment-77890
Fri, 02 Dec 2016 13:36:36 +0000https://cogzest.com/?p=4827#comment-77890RSS feeds are the only practical way to stay up to date with the hundreds of software, security, and other industry blogs I read. Visiting each of these sites every day and trying to remember what I’ve seen before would be prohibitively time-consuming.

RSS feeds allow me to consume all news in one stream, like a custom newspaper. When I run my reader (I use Feedly), it starts where I left off last time, and I’m therefore much less likely to miss anything.

Which is why it’s infuriating when web sites don’t support RSS (thankfully there are few of these). Some sites have RSS feeds that are hopelessly broken, like the SANS InfoSec Handlers’ Diary (https://isc.sans.edu/diary/). I’ve been leaning on SANS to fix their feed for literally years.

And then there are software announcement blogs that are updated inconsistently, like Mozilla’s Firefox blog (https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/category/firefox/). For some inexplicable reason, Mozilla now only announces SOME new versions here.

Of course the reason many sites don’t like RSS is that the owners are less likely to see any advertising income for RSS reader visits.

]]>Comment on Psychology of the Base: Why Do Some Canadians Still Support the Harper Government? by Experiencing and Analyzing Emotions on a Perturbing Election Night – CogZesthttps://cogzest.com/2015/10/psychology-of-the-base-why-do-some-still-support-the-harper-government/#comment-77554
Fri, 11 Nov 2016 04:49:39 +0000http://cogzest.com/?p=3502#comment-77554[…] beyond cognitive science/psychology. However, during the last Canadian election I mused about the Psychology of the Base: Why Do Some Canadians Still Support the Harper Government?. Some of what I wrote there likely applies at the psychological […]
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